The Five Knives Every Cook Should Have

The Nakiri Knife

If you’ve been around Milk Street for a bit, you’ve heard us wax poetic about Japan’s answer to prepping produce, the blunt-nosed nakiri. It may look like a simple, slim rectangle, but it’s smarter than that—the blade is double-beveled (sharp on both sides) and thin, so it slips right through vegetables. The largely flat cutting edge goes all the way through produce for clean slices, so matchsticks or diced cubes detach from each other fully. (The blade is embossed with a nonstick file pattern that replicates the kourochi (blacksmith) or tshuchime (pear skin) finish to traditional nakiris, so sliced ingredients fall right off.) I want tidy knife work generally, but I especially value it for vegetable prep. Evenly processed vegetables cook uniformly and look beautiful, showing both skill and care.

We love the nakiri so much, we made our own. It’s precise enough to cut carrots into perfect coins and reduce herbs and chard into ribbons and tough enough to take on a hardy squash. The broad blade shields your fingers when you chop and works as a bench scraper to transfer chopped veggies to the simmering pot (it’s also my favorite knife to use to smash garlic cloves). Our special touch? And a gentle, almost imperceptible curve makes rock chopping and mincing possible, which is tough to do with a traditional nakiri. If the full-size looks like a little too much knife, our Small Nakiri is a slightly scaled down version that offers the same benefits in a compact, easy-to-control package.

The Cleaver

Some cooks, especially those who specialize in Chinese cooking, are wizards at using a tall cleaver for nearly any kitchen task—and for good reason. They’re built with a “forward balance,” which means its center of gravity leans toward the tip of the knife, eliminating how much force the cook has to use. Basically, the knife does some of the work for you, perfect for marathon prep sessions.

The Milk Street Cleaver is the knife you want for batch cooking. It’s less than half a pound and—at 7 inches long, 3 inches tall—it’s an inch shorter than the average cleaver for lighter, more nimble action. And, unlike most cleavers that feature a basic rectangular blade design, we added some distinctive design elements, like a cutaway heel that allows for a few comfortable grips. To feel and function like a smaller knife, the cutaway heel lets you choke up close and tight on the blade. Or slide your hand back on the handle for more clearance, leverage and power.

The blade’s edge differs as well. Compared to the typical cleaver’s perfectly straight blade edges, the Milk Street Cleaver gently curves tip to heel for a natural slicing and chopping motion. It’ll feel the same in use as your chef’s knife. A full-sized, ergonomic handle, far longer than the stubby handles on most traditional Chinese-style cleavers, helps create a neutral midpoint balance that feels more natural than the forward-leaning heft of most cleavers.

There’s little a Chinese-style cleaver can’t do once you get the hang of the tall, weighty blade. We tend to favor them for chopping large batches of vegetables or meat, for soups and stews, or splitting thick-skinned winter squash. A big chuck roast to turn into stew meat? A soccer-ball sized cabbage to shred for coleslaw? Reach for the cleaver. It’s also great for slicing chicken or pork cutlets.

The “Power” Paring Knife

Let’s be honest—most paring knives stink, but you still need one. They’re essential for detail work. Full-sized knives just don’t offer the grip and access of a smaller handle and blade to maneuver for peeling, mincing, trimming, de-seeding and the like. But how about something with a little more “oomph” than the average $5 buck paring knife?

The Kitchin-kiji is our power paring knife. It’s bigger and stronger than most options out there. It’s perfect for all the “in-between” jobs, small enough for detailed handwork like slicing garlic and shallots, trimming mushrooms or cutting fruit. Plus, we designed it with a broad blade to be large enough that it won’t twist, and the larger handle fills the hand for a confident grip.

I grew up with small, flimsy knives at home—not that they ever stopped the immense production of my grandmother and mom—so the Kitchin-kiji is hands down my favorite Milk Street blade. With its curved spine, flat cutting edge and pointed tip, you have a triple threat of visibility, cutting power and precision “steering,” for tasks like slitting open chilies, hulling strawberries and trimming fat from cuts of meat.

The Serrated Knife

Every kitchen needs a serrated knife that will cut through anything and everything, from thick-crusted sourdough and tender-crumbed sandwich bread to fruits and vegetables. And many serrated knives are great all-purpose knives, ideal for cooks who don’t want to think at all about maintenance. Their teeth retain their bite for a long time.

If you ask me, there’s room for two serrated knives in the kitchen. A shorter utility knife that can step up to bat for slicing tomatoes, halving sandwiches, spreading mayo and so on. The serrated Milk Street Kitchin-tan’s grippy razor teeth effortlessly slice though anything and everything: tomatoes and peppers, fibrous broccoli stems and asparagus stalks, rubbery citrus peels. Some of my colleagues reach for this knife more than nearly any other Milk Street design.

And secondly, I’d be remiss to leave a longer serrated knife off the list. The Milk Street Noko Offset Serrated Knife has, like its name suggests, a raised a handle that keeps your hand and knuckles out of baguettes, boules, pastries and even pie plates. It swoops into a curve for a powerful slicing motion, so you’re less likely to have to saw back and forth through a tough loaf. And, the Noko has variegated serrations: the knife starts and ends smooth to pierce food and cleanly finish the slice, with shallow serrations in the middle that won’t crush a loaf’s crumb. And the blade is serrated on both sides, so it’ll cut straight whether you’re a rightie or a leftie.

The Flexible Knife

A flexible knife might be the sleeper hero of the knife block. It’ll curve around fruit and vegetables or bend in the right spots as you carve up a chicken. The Milk Street Petty knife takes a page from the Japanese knife repertoire; it’s a utility knife that is part paring knife, part small chef’s knife and part boning knife, to form a mid-sized prep tool that flexes to the job.

It’s also not too much knife. At six inches long, the blade tapers to a fine tip and will allow a natural, gentle slicing motion that’s gentle on the wrist. Like our nakiri, the blade features a distal taper—the blade’s spine is thicker at the handle for stability, then grows progressively thinner to the tip to minimize drag when cutting and to improve the knife’s flexibility. Not only is the knife flexible, it’s easy to maneuver when butchering meats, like breaking down a chicken to parts or taking meat off the bone for braises or stews. The nimble knife easily negotiates tight joints and cartilage.